Bryony Gordon shares a passion with former Microsoft boss Steve Balmer and 23
per cent of Britons

On the face of it, most of us have little in common with Steve Ballmer. The 58-year-old from Detroit is worth an estimated £12.5 billion and, as of this month, is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. A contemporary of Bill Gates, Ballmer became Microsoft’s 30th employee in 1980, eventually rising to be chief executive. When he retired from Microsoft in February, he found himself in an “atypical glum mood”. So Ballmer did what he had to do to get through the pain: he binged on box-sets. Specifically, all 112 episodes of The Good Wife.

And this we can surely relate to: the comfortably numb sensation that can only be experienced through two tubs of ice cream or one bottle of wine or five hours of your latest television obsession (or, preferably, all three).

According to a survey carried out earlier this year by Deloitte, 23 per cent of Brits now watch television in this way, and I refuse to engage with anything unless there are at least three episodes lined up and ready to go. Honestly, who has the patience to wait seven days for one paltry hour of TV? I can’t wait a week between episodes – I have too many box-sets to get through, too many fabulous characters to see, and the only way to do this is to put in a good three hours of binge-watching a night. Night after night after night.

Binge-watching is such a feature of modern life that the term has entered the Oxford Dictionary, though some think it as dangerous to society as binge-drinking. How can we scare our children and grandchildren with warnings that too much Peppa Pig will make their eyes go square when last night we stayed up until 1am finishing House of Cards? Damn Netflix, with its handy “We are starting the next episode in 13 seconds” tool. Must. Press. Stop.

And speaking of Netflix, you can find all four seasons of the sketch show Portlandia there. I mention this only because in one episode, handily known as the “One More Episode episode”, a couple become so addicted to Battlestar Galactica that they lose their jobs and their friends and get bladder infections, their addiction to the series leaving them incapable even of getting off the sofa and going to the loo. When they finally finish Battlestar Galactica, they are so devastated that they stalk the show’s creators, kidnap them, and force them to write another season. The writers are only freed after they suggest that the couple start watching Doctor Who.

But as lardy-bottomed and lazy as a box-set binge might seem, it is, I think, an essential exercise that enables us to feel that rare thing: part of a community. Television is our common shared experience, the thing we talk about at dinner parties and water coolers and in queues at coffee shops. In the process of writing this piece, I have discussed with colleagues: the slow progress of Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons towards the Narrow Sea (Game of Thrones, durr!); our favourite characters in Orange is the New Black (Red! Piper! Pennsatuckey! Poussey!); why it is important to break up a drama box-set binge with a ''light comedy’’ box-set binge, such as 30 Rock or It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (at only 20 minutes an episode, they are the sorbets of the box-set world). Plus, it’s not like we are bingeing on junk. Among industry professionals, television is widely thought of as being of higher quality than movies. So the box-set is the organic Whole Foods of viewing, I’ll have you know.

Other bonuses of the box-set? Well, they have undoubtedly saved relationships and freed us from the tyranny of tedious television scheduling (though I think “cheating” on your partner by watching an episode without them should be grounds for divorce). Say what you like about Breaking Bad, but for the five blissful weeks it took my husband and I to watch all six seasons, we talked endlessly, even if it was only about the evolution of Walter White and oh-my-god-Ozymandias-is-not-just-the-best-ever-episode-of-Breaking-Bad-but-the-best-hour-of-television-of-all-time.

I get emotional when I think about Breaking Bad. I’m not yet at the ''acceptance’’ stage of box-set bereavement, and I still can’t believe it’s over. The upcoming spin-off show, Better Call Saul, is all I cling to. I hope that Steve Ballmer has dealt better with the end of The Good Wife, because if he was in a glum mood when he left Microsoft after 34 years, I dread to think how he felt when 80 hours of committed box-set viewing came to an end. Luckily for him, the sixth series starts soon.